Fortune cookies: The new financial advisers

Michael Krumboltz

Michael Krumboltz

The SideshowMarch 24, 2014

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When is a cookie worth $421,811? Not often enough. But it did happen to one San Jose woman, who used the numbers on a fortune cookie to win a California Lottery Mega Millions jackpot, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

The winner, Merces Goncalves, told lottery officials that she chose the five winning numbers — 10, 29, 31, 35 and 45 — from the numbers inside her fortune cookie.

Had Goncalves picked the "Mega winning number" as well — in this case, 10 — she would have taken home a prize worth $240 million for the March 4 drawing.

But there's no use crying over what could have been, when reality is already pretty fantastic.

"I don't care that I didn't hit the big one," Goncalves said, according to the Mercury News.

She has plans for at least part of the winnings, according to the Mercury News. She and her husband of 52 years will take their first honeymoon.

Goncalves isn't the first person to win with an assist from a fortune cookie. Heck, she isn't the first to do so this month.

Over the other side of the country, Emma Duvoll, a 75-year-old great-grandmother, used the numbers in her fortune cookie to take home a $2 million jackpot. She told the New York Post earlier this month that she'd tried birthdays and anniversaries in the past, but they didn't work.